THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE PRETTY AND
BRILLIANT Song Ching into the rougher and masculine Chu Li, while
unlikely to succeed, was nonetheless solidly based on predictable
principles. One was that authoritarian societies, particularly
those which received their orders from machines, ran on orders and
tended to carry out those orders to the letter and without
question, even at the cost of common sense. The other was that most
people would believe that it took someone with the artistry,
skills, and experience of an expert like Doctor Wang to accomplish
such a transformation at all, when in a computer age all it took
was someone who could talk to a computer and order it to do the
work.
Chu Li was barely fifteen; his youth made the illusion easier to
pull off, and some rather basic changes helped it along. Song
Ching’s hair was cut extremely short, almost but not quite
gone along the sides and short with a straight-back clipper cut on
top, while the nails had been closely trimmed to the fingers. The
heavy cotton prisoner tunic and baggy trousers made any wearer
shapeless. Song Ching’s middle soprano had been lowered in
pitch one half octave; any more would have been inconsistent with a
boy of fifteen. Chu Li’s dialect was Mandarin, not Song
Ching’s native dialect but the one used at Center and
therefore no problem.
The boys had been back in the cell, sedated, barely twenty
minutes when the guards came for them. Their sleeves were rolled
up, and each was given a shot that counteracted any sedative drugs
still in their bodies. Both sat up, groaning and holding their
heads.
“Get yourselves in order!” a guard barked to them.
“In five minutes each of you will be fed. I strongly
recommend you eat everything; it may be a long time before you get
another decent meal, if ever.” That was said with something
of a smirk. “You will be permitted ten minutes for this and
another five to use the toilet. Then you will be prepared to
leave.” With that, the guard turned and stalked out. The cell
door closed behind him.
“Oooh! My head is only now trying to make peace
with me,” Deng Ho moaned.
“It is the same with me,” Chu Li responded. In Han
and many other Oriental cultures, cousins of the same generation
regarded one another as brothers and sisters and acted accordingly.
The two boys were close. “My head is crowded and confused,
almost as if . . . ”
“As if what?” As if there is another also inside my head, he thought,
but he couldn’t say that. “I just wonder if they messed
with our minds, and if they did, would we know?”
“How’s your—thing?” Memories of brutish guards beating and torturing for the
slightest infractions. Memories of one of them.
“There is no pain,” Chu Li told his cousin.
“It is not right, though. I shall have to pee sitting down
for a while, I think. I do not know what awaits us, but it cannot
be any worse than here. Even death is better than here.”
Chu Li tried to clear his mind. So long as he concentrated on
the here and now, it was fine, but when he let himself relax, his
thoughts became somewhat crowded and confused. The guards who had
beaten him had threatened “to make a girl of him,” but
even that would not have given him memories and information that
seemed to belong to a girl, one from a far different background and
one he had never known. Some of those memories and impressions were
far sharper than those from his own life—but there was a
difference. He could remember that other life, but he could not
place himself in the position of that girl. He felt as if he were
looking at things from the viewpoint of an outside observer.
He had little time to dwell on this right away, for the guards
were sticking solidly to their schedule. Chu Li and Deng Ho were
placed in handcuffs and short leg irons and marched rudely through
corridors, checkpoints, and safeguards to the main entrance, where
a squad of black-clad regular security police awaited them.
“They’re all yours, Lieutenant,” the chief
guard said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “We’ve
put them through the mill and taught them some manners. Good
riddance.”
The lieutenant just nodded, and both men pressed their thumbs on
the receiving board to signify the transfer.
“All right, you two,” the new captor said to the
boys. “No trouble, now. I don’t know what they did to
you in there, and I don’t care. Legally, you are no longer
citizens of the Community or even human beings. You are cattle, the
property of the System Administrative Council, and they can and
will do with you as they wish, as can I as their deputy. Not a word
out of you, now; follow me.”
They were led out to a landing bay where a skimmer awaited them.
They got in and were surprised to find two girls already seated
there, both in the same prison garb they themselves wore. Neither
girl turned to look at them but just sat quiet and sullen. Chu Li
thought he saw some sort of scar or welt on the face of the one
closest to him, but then he was chained in his seat and could look
only forward.
The large passenger skimmer lifted quickly into the air, took
its assigned exit trajectory, and smoothly cleared the dome, then
rose to cruising altitude. As the skimmer gained speed, the boys
were pushed back into their seats.
They wanted to talk to the girls, who were seated in front of
them, but a few nasty whacks from a guard’s leather stick
produced silence. Chu Li had nothing to do but settle back and
think.
Why did he have this strange girl’s memories? What had
they done to him in there and why? He tried to relax and sort out
what he could of this alien information. The Lord Buddha
protect him! She’d been the daughter of the chief
administrator! The very bastard who had ordered the massacre of his
people! And she had been there!
He compared his own memories to hers. Darkness, sudden cold,
people screaming and running, shots all over, illuminating the
dark. One shot catches his sister and burns her upper half to
melted goo. All the time she had been up there, in
the officer’s skimmer, enjoying every moment and wanting to
get down and get into the battle herself, to shoot some of his
people. It had been nothing but a game to her, an amusing
entertainment.
The more he examined her memories and attitudes, the more he
hated her. People were mere objects to her, toys for her amusement
or fools to play off each other for her gain. Rich, pampered,
spoiled, and arrogant, she was a most unpleasant person, the very
kind he had always been taught ruled the world. Such beauty and
such genius. Such evil.
How he would like to get hold of her, rip off her fine clothes,
dress her in rags, exchange her jasmine perfume for sweat and dung,
make her the lowest peasant slave, show her what it felt like to be
brutalized. She and her whole cursed family. It was they who should
have been on this ship going to some deep hell, not the ones who
were here.
But what were her memories doing in his mind? Some kind of
mistake? She had been at Center herself, it seemed, and not as a
visitor or voyeur but to be remade into a good noble’s wife
and breeder. It was too kind a fate for her, but it was at least a
step toward justice. She had been an expert at computers; she had
examined his people’s discoveries. Had her old memories and
knowledge gotten mixed in with his in that computer by some
mistake? It was possible. It was also possible that she had managed
this herself, to save her knowledge even as they were stripping
clean her soul. If so, it was justice that the daughter of his
people’s murderer should inadvertently pass on that knowledge
to one of her victims.
He now had that knowledge, including the actual way to steal a
spaceship, and he hoped he could use it. It would be the ultimate
revenge on her if she was mentally made over into a prim little
wife while he, whose people had made these discoveries and had been
destroyed while she watched and thrilled at the spectacle, was
somehow able to use that to escape.
It was all too evil to him and too disturbing. His grandfather
long ago had taught him an ancient mental discipline, one which
gave control of thoughts and memories and could even fool the big
computers for periods of time. His people had survived with it and
escaped detection for a generation, and he now applied it to
another aim. It was a form of self-hypnosis, but it was more than
that; it was a mystical thing that worked by will and concentration
and the Ten Exercises. He wanted her out. He wanted all traces of
her banished from his conscious mind, save only the computer
knowledge and skill and the secrets she knew. She would give up her
knowledge, skills, and discoveries, but then he would have the
pleasure at least of killing her in his mind.
But for the first time in his memory, the mental discipline did
not really work. It distanced the girl’s memories a bit more,
but she was still there.
The skimmer flew over vast, rocky desert and eerie tablelands,
then began to slow and descend. Atop one desolate plateau there was
a huge blocky complex, and to one side, rising up like a temple
spire, was a spaceship. It could be seen clearly against the
morning sky; the pilot pointed it out through the broad front
windscreen of the skimmer. Chu Li brought himself out of the Ten
Exercises to see what the excitement was about and got somewhat
excited himself. Space! They are exiling us to space!
They settled down so slowly and so close to the spaceship that
it went by the front windows in dramatic fashion. Finally the door
opened, and the security lieutenant unbuckled himself and got out,
carrying the security identifier from Center. After greeting the
other security officials, he immediately inserted the module into
the space center systems slot. This way, the four young people
would be identified by security records and systems as outbound
prisoners. It was also another link in the computer-engineered
masquerade: Now the spaceport records would show Chu Li as
“he” now appeared, with the current Chu Li’s
fingerprints and eyeprints. The spaceport was tied directly into
Master System; therefore, the Center security computer had encoded
a correction program showing initial data errors and reversing the
prints of Song Ching and Chu Li. Her body was now totally
identified and registered as Chu Li, 15, male, born in Paoting,
Hopeh Province, apprehended in illegal activity, Chamdo Province,
and declared Property of the State; remanded to Melchior Research
and Detention facility until death. As the real Chu Li no longer
existed, not even in trace, Song Ching was about to vanish
impossibly and forever—and heads would roll for it.
When the prisoners were ordered out, the boys got their first
clear look at the girls, both of whom looked downcast and old
beyond their years. There were scars on their faces. Ugly
ones.
They were marched inside and down a busy corridor, past many
eyes staring at them from offices, to an elevator, then taken to an
upper-level detention area. It had clearly not been designed as
such; there were barred gates at either end of a short corridor
monitored by cameras as well as by human guards, but the four cells
were little more than barren, unfinished offices in which had been
placed some army mattresses that looked as if they’d seen
work and a small commode not attached to plumbing but containing a
pitcher of water and some plastic glasses. They were told that if
they needed to eliminate they were to yell for a guard and that one
would be along to take them one at a time to the lone toilet on the
floor.
To Chu Li’s surprise, he was pushed into a cell with one
of the girls. “This is not proper!” he protested.
The guard grinned. “My orders were to split that pair up.
They have a real way with locks and stuff. Go ahead and have some
fun if you’re old enough to know what I mean. We don’t
care.”
The door slammed shut, leaving them alone. The girl kept her
eyes on him but did not say a word. The haunted expression in her
eyes drew his attention away from the two large, irregular scars
that disfigured her face.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I have
much honor but little else and would not do that if I
could.”
The ice was broken, and she relaxed a bit. “What do you
mean, if you could?” Her voice was high and nasal, her
Mandarin dialect colored by a peasant’s accents and tone.
“It is too embarrassing to discuss.”
“There is nothing too embarrassing for me. I have lost
even my honor. They—they gave us to the male guards for two
days and nights before cleaning us up for this.”
He was not certain what to say to that. Finally he managed,
“You need not feel shame at that, at least I think not. It
was not of your doing, and it is they who have dishonored
themselves, not you.”
She stood there a moment, then, slowly, tears came to her eyes
and she began to cry. He wasn’t quite sure what to do.
Finally he went over to her, and she leaned against him and just
cried and cried as he held her. He was just at the stage where he
was finding girls different, exotic, and strangely important, but
this was the first time he had ever held one in his arms. It felt
good to lend some strength to her; he had been treated harshly, but
she had endured far more.
Clearly this cry had been a long time coming, and he eased her
onto the floor mat and just sat beside her, holding her until she
had it cried out. She clung to him as if he were very important,
yet they had only just now met and did not even know each
other’s names.
When she was done crying, he asked her if he could get her some
water, and she nodded. He brought her a cup and a paper towel to
dry her eyes.
She had been attractive once; he could see that. No great
beauty, but it had been a good face, and because of that, the scars
were an even greater disfigurement. One ran from the left side of
her mouth up her cheek and then back toward her ear, pulling the
corner of the lip up grotesquely and permanently exposing two
teeth; the other was a huge, deep horizontal gash. Both were built
up like mountains on her smooth skin by scar tissue that had partly
turned purple and brown. Still, as he looked at her now and helped
her dry her tears, he felt odd stirrings inside him, and though he
could not forget the scar tissue, for the moment it did not seem
very important.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, blowing her nose.
“I—I was always the strong one. I am sorry that I
permitted you to see me this way.”
“It is all right,” he responded. “You must be
strong indeed to go through that and not be mad.”
“Perhaps I am mad,” she responded. “I have
been living what can only be a nightmare, in which you are the
first man to show any kindness.”
“Only half a man,” he responded, not realizing how
much truth there was in that description. Because she had told him
her ultimate shame, he felt not only that he could tell her his
secret but that it might give her some idea that suffering was not
exclusive. “The guards beat me terribly where that which
makes me a man is, leaving it battered, bruised, and perhaps
broken. There is no pain, but it will be a long time before I know.
That is what I was too embarrassed and ashamed to say
before.”
“Oh! I apologize for asking. Please forgive
me.”
He shook it off. “What is done cannot be undone, and who
knows what was done? Only time will tell that. I am otherwise whole
and very angry at all this. My people taught us that the world was
ruled by monsters in human form, but I did not really believe this
until they came for us. I am Chu Li, by the way, sometimes called
Rat because of my small size and the year of my birth.”
“I am Chow Dai. My sister who suffers with me is Chow Mai.
As you might guess, we are—” she touched the scar on
her right cheek “—were twins.”
“I hope that my cousin, Deng Ho, is honorable with her and
that they get along. He is more likely to be crying on
her shoulder, I fear, though he has held up better than I
would have guessed.” Sparing little, he told her how he and
his cousin had come to be there and what his own people had been
like, free of the tyranny of the machines.
She listened, fascinated. “I have nothing of that in my
past,” she told him. “I fear I have never known even
that much freedom. Even the women of your people were free and
educated.”
“You are not of the Center?”
“No. Oh my, no! We are simple peasant girls. The family
was very big, and we were always hungry, it seemed. When a time of
drought came, my parents had no way to feed us all and no money to
marry us off. Unlike some of the others of their generation, they
did not believe in drowning baby daughters, and so had too
many.”
He was appalled. “They drowned babies?”
She seemed surprised at his reaction. “It has been the
custom for thousands of years. They try and wipe it out, but in bad
times it returns. Sons may return what they consume and care for
the parents in their old age. Daughters are a burden, for you must
pay even to marry them to someone. We understood this. There was a
petition to the Lord of the Estates, who had always encouraged even
the poor families to keep their daughters, and he listened. We were
sold to the household of Colonel Chin, a mighty warlord, to be
personal servants to his own daughter.”
“Sold?” He could hardly believe this. Hers
was a world far removed from his experience.
“We didn’t mind. Our parents were relieved of their
burden, received some sum they could use, and knew that we were
honorably employed. Our mistress was harsh and demanding, but we
had fine clothes, food such as we had never dreamed of eating,
protection, and something of a position.”
“As a slave, you mean.”
“No, as a member of the household staff. It has far more
standing than planting and picking rice, and we were very young.
Then we were taken one time to Center, a place we had never dreamed
existed. It was like a high-born’s heaven. It was our
undoing, though, in the end. We helped the mistress bathe and
clothe herself, tended to the personal things, but much of the
other work was done by the machines. We were not permitted out of
the quarters except in the company of our mistress, so it was very
boring. We could not even sneak out, for we did not know how to
open the locks.”
“I would have spent the time reading. Surely there were
many books and tapes around on many topics.”
Again she looked embarrassed. “I—we—cannot
read or write.”
He felt foolish and ashamed of himself. In the colony there were
many who were never able to master most or all of the more than
thirty thousand characters of the alphabet. He himself had had help
with machines and special training to allow him to read at a level
far beyond what one his age, even if very bright, would have
managed without them. Most people in China could not read, in fact.
Literacy was what truly set the classes apart, the heart of their
division. If, somehow, a peasant could learn to read and take the
examinations, he could rise in society. The better one read and the
more one read, the more complex the examination one took. It was
the one road to social mobility open to all Chinese, although, of
course, it was next to impossible for a peasant to learn to read,
while the child of a stupid or slow highborn who could not manage
the skill was never demoted to peasant.
“I am sorry. I will make no more stupid remarks,” he
said lamely. “Please tell me more of how you came
here.”
Her smile told him that all was forgiven. “One day a man
came who was an expert on locks. A security man of sorts. He was
young and very handsome, and we made a fuss over him, I’m
afraid. He began to brag about his trade and show off his knowledge
of the locks and security systems, and even explained some of his
tools. It was quite an education. He didn’t think mere
peasant servants could understand what he said, but it was actually
quite simple. We soon found basic apartment locks no problem at
all. Some other locks and doors were more difficult, but even ones
requiring fingerprints were beatable. Once you understood the
principle, it was simple to find a way around each.”
“Some of those would still require special tools to
defeat,” he noted. “You said as much
yourself.”
“Some tools were simple and could be made from other
things. Others, the complicated mechanical tools, you could get if
you wanted. We once had an uncle who was something of a magician. A
criminal, really, but a minor one. He would put on little magic
shows and phony gambling games in the village. Sometimes he
arranged to lose, for he would then simply brush against you, and
the contents of your purse would be in a hidden pocket in his
shirt. Anyone with long fingers, nerve, and short nails could do it
if they practiced, and he showed us all the tricks. We kids would
always be doing it to one another and to others just for fun. We
never—hardly ever—kept anything.”
“You said you used to have an uncle. He is dead
now?”
“Yes. Hanged when I was twelve. The trick is even easier
with two, and my sister and I are very good at it. So, when we saw
a repairman with tools we wanted walking along, we had no problem
getting them. The highborn used to be the easiest, but those of
Center are easier yet. They are ignorant of the trick and casual
about it.”
He nodded, his appreciation of her skills growing. “So you
were not bored anymore.”
“No. Oh, it was really all just a game. Slip out and slip
into the dwelling of some highborn who was not in at the time and
take something minor, something pretty but not likely to be missed,
such as a bottle of perfume or some bauble. It became a contest,
and it was most exciting.”
“I bet. And then you were caught?”
“Not very quickly. We simply were carried away by our own
poor ignorance. We wandered in one time to a security zone which
was computer-monitored and tripped alarms. We were sealed in and
trapped. At first they could not believe that we were who and what
we seemed, but after long sessions with drugs and doctors and
machines, they decided we were just what we seemed to be. So they
tied us to a wall, whipped us, then gave us to the security guards.
Then, suddenly, we were pulled back, bathed, cleaned up and tended
to, placed in chains, and sent to the flying machine.”
“Pardon me for mentioning it, but your wounds are from the
beating?”
“No. I have more scars all up and down my back. When they
first threw me to the guards, I fought. We both did. I scratched
the face of one of them very badly. They held us down while he
carved this in my face and similar gashes in my sister’s
face. He—he said that we might as well enjoy what was coming,
because no man would wish to do anything with us again. I wished
only to kill myself in my shame, but they made very sure I could
not do that. Only by finally convincing them that I would do
nothing rash right now did I gain any freedom of movement, even to
being here like this. I could see in every eye how hideous I have
become.”
“I—knew—a woman once. A girl. She was of
highborn stock, and her beauty was perfection, yet inside she was
the personification of all that is foul, evil, and monstrous in
people. Those attracted to her beauty will be as flies in a
spider’s web. I, too, might have been a fly in her web, but
even in this place I learn and improve myself. My Buddhist teacher
would understand, although it took his pupil this long to see his
meaning. The body is but a shell. One must look beyond to the soul
and see only it if it shines pure.” Impulsively, although he
had never done it before, he drew her to him and kissed her. When
their lips parted, the look on her face was a mixture of shock,
surprise, and almost childlike wonder.
“I think,” she whispered, “that I may yet live
a little while.”
“I did not do this out of pity, you must believe that, but
I feel your pain within me,” he said softly. “You have
suffered far more than I have.”
“No. I did not lose my family and all my people, and what
I did I did myself, knowing it was criminal. You had no choice in
it. We threw away comfortable lives out of boredom, and now we pay
for that, but you are without guilt or blame, and you have lost
everything. Now we both go to our fate, whatever and wherever it
is. I heard them say that the great spire out there is a ship that
goes into the heavens, beyond the world. Is that true? Is that even
possible?”
“Yes. It can go from this plant to another.”
“What is a planet?” she asked him, genuinely
curious.
“Huh? Other worlds than this, like the moon, only farther
off.”
“You mean they are sacrificing us by sending us to the
moon goddess? I have often prayed to her. She may be
merciful.”
He was startled. Ignorance was one thing, but how could he
reconcile someone who had figured out in a brief lesson how to pick
some of the most elaborate computer-controlled security locks in a
high-tech place like Center with someone who clearly had no idea
that there was any place beyond China, who thought the moon was a
goddess and probably also believed that the world was flat?
“We are not being sacrificed,” he assured her.
“Not that we might not be better off at that. We are being
sent to another place like the one we have just left, only
suspended in the heavens so that there is no way for us to ever
leave. I do not know what happens to the people sent there, except
that it strikes fear even in the hearts of the guards of Center
security.”
She accepted that. “That fills me with fear as well. A
place in the heavens could not ever be escaped from. You might go
through the locks, but you would fall endlessly in the
heavens.”
“No, you would be dead before that. There is no air to
breathe in space. The only air we will have will be in the place
they keep us. It is better than any locks to keep someone
imprisoned.”
“Yet you are not afraid. I can tell.”
In fact he was afraid, particularly now that he’d
heard about her own treatment, seen the scars on the outside and
sensed the others on her soul. If what both of them had experienced
was not the worst punishment, then they were being taken to a
horror he could not imagine. The fact that it was an unknown of
such dimensions was terrifying, yet he could not admit that to her
or let it dominate him.
“I fear only what I face that is worthy of that
fear,” he responded bravely. “Then I will face death
bravely and spit at him. For now, I still yearn to
fight.”
As they talked, he began examining the room for hidden cameras
and microphones. A plan was beginning to take shape in his mind,
and if he could somehow communicate it to her and she could do her
part, it was just possible. His people were gone, save for himself
and Deng, but he still had their dream, and he had the knowledge to
carry it out, as well.
He found surveillance devices—not many but sufficient to
block any real secrets. He settled back on the mat next to her.
“You know, my people found how to fly one of those
spaceships,” he said casually but in a low tone. “It is
a pity we will be chained and probably guarded in a locked room all
the way to wherever we go.”
She lay down comfortably beside him and squeezed his hand.
“Yes, it is,” she agreed.
They had talked almost nonstop throughout the day, without
reservation or hesitancy in even the most personal and intimate
things. It was as if they had known each other all their lives and
were catching up on the time spent apart. Too, there was both a
direct and a subtle exchange of vital information as he tried to
give her a cram course in the basics of astronomy while also
conveying what he needed from her in the practical sense.
A meal was finally delivered, and it proved to be a pleasant
surprise. The recipe was Mongolian, with chunks of lamb, fried
wonton in a spicy garlic-laced sauce, and rice, and the vegetables
tasted fresh. Even the tea was hot. Chu Li wasn’t sure if
this was the last meal of a condemned prisoner or, more likely, the
same thing being served to the staff in this cobbled-together
prison section.
Chow Dai wondered why they had bothered to split up the two
pairs, since with human guards and cameras in unfamiliar territory
she was unlikely to be able to do anything. Chu Li had responded
that it was probably just another tactic to disorient them, but he
didn’t really believe that. Their captors had analyzed his
mind, and Deng’s, and the minds of the Chow sisters and knew
them probably better than anyone did. They were being sent to this
distant place, at great trouble and expense, because someone there,
for some unspeakable reason, had a use for two boys and two girls
in their middle teens. He suspected they knew that both Deng and he
were the kind whose hearts would go out to such kindred spirits in
distress and that mere attentions by a male might well guarantee
that the pair would not commit suicide or try something so
desperate it would mean their death.
The spaceship they had seen was an OG-47 resupply ship. It had
to have landed for repairs of some sort that were not available at
the moment in space; usually such ships did not land at all but
were serviced by ground-to-orbit cargo ships. The OG-47 had a
pressurized passenger compartment holding up to sixteen for one to
three days, fewer for longer journeys. The pilot’s cabin as
usual was in a vacuum state in space but could be entered by
airlock in a space suit. There was no guarantee that such suits
would be aboard, but if they were, they would be Type 61s and
stored in a computer-locked compartment to the rear of the
passenger cabin, to be opened automatically in case of
emergency.
It startled him just to know that. Where had he learned it? Not
with his own people, certainly. Not from those strange memories of
the girl, either. He became more and more convinced that someone
had played some nasty tricks on his mind, and he didn’t like
it. Were they being toyed with? Had someone who knew his
people’s project given him this much just to see if he could
really do it? Steal a spaceship?
It had to be something like that. Dai and Mai were part of it,
too. It was too impossible to believe that he, with his knowledge,
would find himself teamed with two accomplished thieves and
locksmiths. He did not for one minute believe that the girls were
anything other than what they appeared to be, but someone or
something had assigned them to be going just where he was
going at the same time and on the same ship.
He disliked the feeling of being a wind-up doll in someone
else’s toy game. Who? This Song Ching? It would be in
character, but what profit would she get by it? She wouldn’t
know if her plan succeeded or failed or get the data to use in any
attempt of her own. To test the security system? Four teenagers
with no real experience when there were almost certainly so many
others they could use who would be better suited?
He could not know, but he would simply have to watch out. The
fact was, no matter what the reason, they had to try to escape.
Certainly Dai was bright; she had understood immediately the
implications of his comments and had been giving and getting
information through the day’s conversations as well.
That evening, the guards came for each prisoner individually and
took them down the hall to a different room, which proved to be a
small water shower with a little dressing area complete with
built-in mirror. After bathing, they were provided with fresh
clothing of the same design as their prison garb, but dyed yellow
with security stamped front and back in Chinese and two other
languages.
Chu Li felt a reluctance to actually take the shower, although
it appeared that there were no visual monitors in there and
therefore that there was some measure of privacy afforded. He had
never bathed very often, but he ordinarily would have wished it
now. But some fear, an unreasoning thing, made him hesitate. He did
not, however, have much choice.
The hypnotics held. When he emerged and looked at himself in the
mirror, he still saw the image of a young boy, not the image that
was actually there. He dressed again and was led back to the
detention room.
After lights-out, she lay beside him, and their hands came
together and squeezed; she clung to him as if he were the only real
thing in her life. They hugged and cuddled for a bit and rubbed
each other’s backs. In the dark, she had no deformities at
all.
He wanted her, and clearly she wanted and needed him, but his
injuries prevented that for now. The fact that they were isolated
and alone and facing an uncertain but definitely unpleasant future
heightened their desire. But they both slept, huddled against each
other for reassurance.
For Chow Dai, Chu Li’s companionship was a deliverance, no
matter how temporary, from the pit of hell. She had never
experienced the kindness and gentleness that this boy had shown her
even when she had been unscarred; the fact that he did so even when
she looked so horrible was wondrous and magical. She barely knew
him, yet she knew she needed him and would risk anything for him.
He had but to ask. She dreamed the first pleasant dreams she had
dreamed in weeks.
Chu Li’s dreams were different. He dreamed that he was
making real love to her, although she had long, silky black hair
and no scars, but as he approached her, naked, she suddenly got a
look of horror on her face and shied away, crying. This was mixed
with other, stranger dreams that even included spaceship schematics
and nightmares where he saw his parents, alive again, but when he
ran to them they recoiled in horror and turned, and when they
turned back they were not his parents at all but the tall,
frightening figures of that other girl’s parents, the chief
administrator and his wife. The girl was there, too, running in and
out of his dreams, spoiling even the good ones, dancing through and
whispering tauntingly, “I know a secret.”
The elderly orderly awakened them with a breakfast of rice and
fish heads. “Eat well and relax,” he told them
genially. “Tonight you leave for your destinies.”
“My sister and the boy—are they all right?”
Chow Dai asked nervously. She had almost a sixth sense, as did many
twins, about her sister even when separated, but she had no real
feelings of Chow Mai now, and that worried her more than
anything.
“Oh, they are getting along fine, as are the two of you,
it seems. Do not worry about them. You will see them today.”
He chuckled to himself and left.
He looked at Chow Dai. “Today. Sometime today.”
She nodded. “I hope they let us see each other for a while
first. You know, when my sister and I are together, often we need
few words even to talk to one another.”
Chu Li was feeling a bit dizzy, a little fuzzy in the head, but
he put his disorientation down to nervous tension and apprehension.
About midday he felt he had to go to the bathroom and called for
the guard. The sense of disorientation continued and his stomach
was upset. In the bathroom, he could be alone and, hopefully, get
something of a grip on himself. He felt as if he was losing his
mind.
Twice he’d failed to respond when Chow Dai had addressed
him by his name. Images—strong, primary images—of his
parents, siblings, old friends, the details of his past life,
seemed to be melting or fading. He suddenly could not remember what
his father or mother looked like. The other memories,
though—her memories—were all still there and
seemed to be getting clearer in spite of his attempts to push them
back.
He was led to the bathroom, and he sat, holding his head in his
hands. Then he looked down and put one of his hands down between
his legs. Suddenly, some of the conditioning broke away and was
gone. They have emasculated me! He unbuttoned his tunic
and looked at and felt his chest. Two huge nipples atop small,
perfect breasts. He quickly got up and disrobed completely,
examining his body as if for the first time. The smooth skin, the
curves . . . A girl! They have changed me
into a girl!
And not just any girl. He knew what was happening now. He was
being changed not just to female, but into her, the one he
hated, the daughter of his people’s murderers!
He saw it all now, or thought he did. She could not remain as
she was, so she had somehow convinced the computers there, or the
doctors, to take him, a lowly nothing, and change him into a mental
and physical duplicate of her. The victim was turning into
the oppressor. The memory of the beatings had probably been planted
so that he wouldn’t notice the surgery until it was too late
to betray her.
There was an angry knock and an impatient snarl from the other
side of the door. He knew he had to get dressed again fast and get
out of there. They could change his shape, but they could not
change his mind, he vowed to himself. He was a boy, even if now
locked in a girl’s body. He might have her memories, but he
would never become her. Never. He would die first. There
was more to manhood than what they had stolen from him. Monks
refused all sex, yet they were certainly men. It was important to
him that he keep this attitude no matter how much of her eventually
took over. He could never become her, become the callous, cruel,
and evil one she was, if he retained that.
He was rudely cursed by the guard and led back to the detention
room where Chow Dai awaited. Chow Dai. He could face anything but
dashing her few hopes—even this. He still wanted her. He
loved her, damn it—but he could never make love to
her. That was what his dreams had been telling him.
“Rat! You were gone so long, I was getting worried about
you,” she told him.
“I—I made some discoveries about myself,” he
responded carefully. At least his voice still sounded normal, at
least to him. He wanted to tell her, to tell somebody, but
while she would understand, the revelation would still crush her.
He couldn’t do it. Not now. Not until he had to.
“Discoveries?”
“My—injuries—are far worse than I thought,
that’s all.”
She hugged him. “Don’t worry. Peasant girls are
taught infinite patience.” Infinite is right, he thought sourly, but said nothing.
For the time being, escape was the only thing that mattered. If
they did not escape, none of the rest would matter. Later, if they
made it, he would find some gentle way to tell her.
In fact, by the change in him, the quieter periods, his
reluctance to really get close, she guessed a part of the truth.
She suspected that he had just now realized the extent to which the
same people who had tortured, raped, and disfigured her had also
disfigured him. She knew just from the treatment she had received
afterward that they could do much, even make you forget your
injuries and pain for a while, although the effects wore off. Her
mood fell as she voiced her suspicions to herself. They have made
him a eunuch, she guessed. It is the only explanation. She had
almost expected it, guessed it from the start when he had spoken of
his injury. Well, she wasn’t going to pretend that it
didn’t matter to her, but he was still the same kind, gentle
one who had treated her with respect and ignored her own
disfigurement. She had no intention of abandoning him, not now. If
he could ignore her disfigured shell and see only someone
worthwhile inside, she could certainly do the same.
But though both of them saw and preferred the lie, the truth
would not be kept down inside of Chu Li. Bit by bit, as the day
wore on, Song Ching’s truth chipped slowly but methodically
away at Chu Li, and he fought it. The boy’s memories and
sense of identity were rapidly fading now, leaving only Song Ching,
yet the biochemically induced Chu Li personality was becoming
firmer, harder, fixed.
Even for the computer it had been a rush job, an emergency, and
it might have been predicted that something undefinable and
unanticipated would arise. Song Ching had ordered blocks that made
her cold, unemotional, machinelike, and this had been altered only
as required by the masquerade. As a result, the basic personality
and responses of Chu Li were the only ones present and created an
overwhelming desire to remain as they were, resisting all attempts
at change. The brain created personality, but it also was subject
to a measure of adaptation, and, having no countermanding
“fallback” personality, it responded to this urgent
desire to maintain current levels. There was a dichotomy inside of
her, a war between body and brain that simply could not go on.
“Are you all right?” Chow Dai asked worriedly.
“You look ill.”
“I—I think I should just lie down for a
while,” he managed. “It is an—aftereffect of what
was done to me. I apologize, but if I lie down for a while, it will
be all right.”
He was a conscious combatant in the war raging inside him, and
it had made him physically ill, both feverish and upset. The
tension and confusion were enormous; he could not stand this much
longer. Either something had to break or he knew he might well
die—die on the brink of possible success and escape in which
he was the only hope for these other people. Any moment now the
guards could come for them, so there was no time for such a fight.
By now he knew he really was Song Ching; there had been no
tampering with Chu Li’s body or mind. Chu Li was certainly
dead, his body long sent to dust or turned to energy, and she was
responsible for that. It was an intolerable thought. It was
intolerable that she should live again while he was dead, no matter
what the price of that life might be, yet his memories even now
were less than ghosts, mere wisps fading with each passing moment,
leaving only Song Ching.
The brain had several mechanisms for resolving such dilemmas,
whether caused by biological malfunction or trauma or otherwise
induced, and all of them were forms of what they called insanity.
If it could not resolve the problems, the brain got hung up in
endless loops and the result was catatonia, but in this case both
sides had a sense of urgency and a single central purpose: escape.
Escape to the stars. The brain needed only a lie that both sides
could accept and believe; if that happened, then memories could be
rewritten, attitudes adjusted, and everything resolved to allow
function. A new reality was called for, and a very personal
one.
In a miraculous revelation, she suddenly understood what had
happened, and there was no more fight, only awe at the justice of
the gods. When the computer had executed Chu Li, his soul had not
gone on but had instead been placed in the body of Song Ching, who
had ordered the destruction of her own personality in her plot. Her
own soul had been cast adrift when this was done, and Chu
Li’s had filled the empty vessel in a measure of justice. The
soul was shaped and formed and purified or dirtied by its
experiences in the flesh, but it did not retain memories as such.
Still, she knew it was Chu Li’s soul animating Song
Ching’s body and guiding her thoughts. That was true justice:
The soul of the enemy who was destroyed by her family was now in
possession of her body, her memories, her knowledge, and those
would be used against her family and the system that supported it.
That was clearly the will of the gods.
There was a price for this, of course. Chu Li’s soul had
not risen to be purified; it remained the soul of a teenage boy. He
was a man trapped in the body and with the memories of a beautiful
woman. It would be a frustrating burden to carry, but the symmetry
of the justice meted out by the gods required it. Because the
knowledge in her head was so vast, so complete, and so dangerous to
those who must be punished, it was a burden that had to be
accepted. It left someone with the means to avenge, and that had to
be sufficient.
For now, the Chu Li masquerade had to be continued so that the
primary goal could be attained. Later there would be time for
explanations and the truth. The reclining figure sat up, saw the
anxious Chow Dai, and smiled. “I am all right now,” he
assured her. “I will be all right from now on.”
She looked relieved. “I was almost going to call the guard
and have you looked at. You really worried me.”
He was glad she hadn’t done that, or the ruse would have
been up right there. There being no machines to measure and
identify souls, it would have taken but a moment for the stupidest
of medics to realize that this was not a boy named Chu Li.
He looked at Chow Dai’s ugly, scarred face and reflected
on how truly ironic this all was. He could do just as well looking
like her; indeed, it would solve some potential problems down the
line. She, on the other hand, would prosper and blossom with the
body he wore. The scientists could make a sadist a gentle poet and
a peasant into an educated artist with their chemicals and
processes, but only the gods could switch souls. Although it would
work out here, it was in a way a reassuring thought: that there was
one thing, at least, beyond science and reserved for the gods.
Not long after, Chow Mai and Deng Ho were sent in to join them.
Deng’s conditioning still held; Chu Li hoped it would hold
long enough to avoid any complications. The two sisters rushed to
each other and embraced and cried a little. Deng grinned at Chu Li.
“Hello, Rat. Surviving?”
Chu Li nodded. “And you?”
Deng gave a knowing smirk. “No problems if you just shut
your eyes,” he whispered, then grew more serious.
“They’ve been through even worse than us. It’s
crazy, but we’re going to some mad hell, and I feel sorry for
them. Kind of takes your mind off it.”
Chu Li looked over at the sisters, who were chattering away in
pure peasant dialect. They seemed to be talking at the same time,
and he guessed from the few words he caught that they were using a
kind of spoken shorthand, expressing complete thoughts.
That’s fine, he thought. He understood full well that the
monitors would never make sense of that garbage.
The girls had only a few minutes for their reunion, though. The
door opened again, and the duty guard stepped in.
“You will all stand and be silent!” he barked
imperiously. “You will now be addressed by the captain of the
vessel that will carry you to your final destination!” He was
as stiff as usual, but nervousness was revealed in his eyes and in
small jerks of his head back toward the door.
Chu Li—he refused to think of himself as otherwise and
certainly not as a “she,” all physical evidence to the
contrary—was startled that such a ship had a captain at all.
A steward perhaps, or even a jailer—but a captain?
They heard the barred gate open and then clang shut again, then
the sound of heavy footsteps approached the door, which the guard
had continued to hold open. When the captain walked in, the
prisoners all gasped and stared at him as if he were some sort of
monster. They are giving us to foreign devils!
Carlo Sabatini stopped and looked at the expressions of absolute
fear and revulsion on those four young faces and drank it in.
Seeing the reactions of people who had never in their lives seen
anyone who was not Oriental was the only bit of fun there was in
this hick, provincial spaceport. These four looked like
they’d never seen anybody but a Han Chinese and the Mongolian
guards before.
“My name is Captain Sabatini,” he announced in
flawless Mandarin, the result of a session with a mindprint
machine. “I am master of the interplanetary ship Star
Islander which will take you from here to Melchior.”
Three of the kids looked blank, but he noticed that the boy on
his far right did not seem to react at all. Clearly that one knew
more than the others, and Sabatini wondered why. He filed it for
future reference.
“The ship, as you may or may not know, is fully automated.
It is piloted by a machine that can make decisions far quicker than
any of us and can fly the ship as no human could. Basically, my job
is to make sure it works correctly and to be certain that any and
all passengers and cargo get safely and comfortably to their
destination, as well as handling things at the ports. As you can
see, I am not Chinese, but rest assured, I am human. I have the
same sort of blood inside of me, and I work the same
way.”
They stared at him, still somewhat awestruck and not a little
afraid. He was imposing, standing over a hundred and
eighty centimeters tall and weighing at least ninety-five kilos of
pure muscle. He had an olive complexion that in their society would
have marked him as ill and at death’s door, thick black hair
with some streaks of gray on the top and cut short on the sides,
and a medium black mustache. He wore a shiny black uniform with
leather boots and belt; the shirt was open at the top and exposed a
fair amount of chest, covered in thick, black hair. He even had
hair on his arms and the back of his hands: thick, black curly
hair. The body hair in particular fascinated all of them. It was
impossible not to think of him as some big ape or gorilla wearing
clothes.
Still, Chu Li was able to break the spell enough to think
clearly. If he goes along, then there is at least one space suit
aboard.
“We don’t normally take off from Earth,” he
told them, “so this will be a rough ride at the start. You
will need to board the ship when it’s angled up, get into
seats as if it were lying flat, and get strapped in, and I do mean
strapped. Anyone who isn’t fully strapped in will die in the
takeoff. Since some of you might be tempted by that idea, we will
have you restrained in place for that part of the trip. Once we
reach orbit and the artificial gravity in the cabin stabilizes, you
will get a measure of freedom, since I don’t want to have to
cart you to the bathroom or spoon-feed you, but you will still be
under limited restraint. I want no problems in our journey, which,
if no unexpected problems or emergencies develop, should take
forty-one days. This is no interstellar speed ship.”
That impressed all four of them. The two boys, who at least
understood what spaceships were, still had trouble with that time
span. The distance involved was really beyond their
comprehension.
“Don’t be too downcast. At other times it might have
taken up to a year to reach Melchior. The positions are the best
possible right now for the shortest distance, which is why we are
taking off now and why we have to do everything exactly on
schedule. Now, since we’re going to be together a long time,
I want to get some facts and rules straight before we even
begin.”
They just continued to gape at him.
“First, and most important, you are booked not as
passengers but as live cargo. That puts you in the same
class as dogs, cats, chickens, and horses. There are two
pressurized sections of the cabin. One is for people, the other is
for animals. The animal section has cages that are not very large
and is otherwise pretty dark and unpleasant. You will be placed
initially in the human section, but if any one of you causes me any
problems at all, one or all of you will be put back there and kept
there for the duration of the voyage. They don’t even have
toilets back there, so think about it. Second, so I don’t
have to look behind me all the time, you will be shackled at all
times and limited in the area you can move. Still, some of you may
figure that I’m only one man, and you might try and get the
best of me in a weak moment of mine. You might try. You might even
succeed, although I promise you that if you try and fail, you will
find me very unpleasant. But let’s say you
succeed.”
He could see in their eyes that this had crossed their minds. It
always did, and he’d transported tougher and nastier ones
than these.
“I cannot pilot the ship,” he told them. “I
cannot even get to the bridge, since it is without air or pressure,
and so neither can you. No matter what happened to me, I
couldn’t help you, and you would wind up in the exact same
place and in the hands of the exact same people, only you
wouldn’t know how to run the life maintenance and support
system for the cabins. I also have within me, implanted by a
surgeon—where, I don’t know—a tiny transmitter.
It is hooked both to the ship and to a Master System relay. If I
die, that beacon stops transmitting. When it does, Master System
will call the ship and determine whether my death was natural or
murder. If it was murder, Master System will take direct command of
the ship and release gas into the compartment that will not kill
you but will put you down into a sleep from which you cannot wake
up without the antidote. If you kill me, not only will you not
escape and not die, but your families back here, no matter how
innocent, will replace you.”
Not likely in the Song Ching family, Chu Li reflected, but then
realized that there were cousins and others who might well be
forced to replace her. However, it was empty to threaten Deng or
himself that way. The system had already destroyed their families
and friends as well. Still, for the girls’ sake, he could not
fail.
All right. So far it was proceeding exactly as the plans in his
mind told him it would. Of course, Sabatini had not mentioned a
couple of other safeguards, but he wouldn’t. That was all
right. There were ways around this.
“Now, with all that out of the way,” Sabatini
concluded, “let me say that I am a ship’s captain, not
a member of the police or the military of anyone. I haul cargo and
people. If you are friendly, cooperative, and make no trouble, this
can be a pleasant voyage. I treat people the way they treat me.
Treat me nasty, and I’ll be nastier. Treat me nice, and I can
be very nice as well. Any questions? Come—speak up. We will
be off soon, and it’ll be too late.”
Chu Li didn’t want to draw much attention, but he had to
know one thing. “If you please, Honorable Captain—what
is this Melchior to which we are being sent?”
“Melchior is a rock about thirty kilometers across that
floats around the sun out in the asteroid belt. There’s
nothing on top but some beacons and a single dock, but the thing is
a hollowed-out rock full of chambers, tunnels, rooms, even
something of a town. It’s a lot of things. It’s a place
for scientific research. It’s occasionally a meeting place
for important administrators who want to be away from all
monitoring. Mostly it’s a prison run by scientists who
don’t have to obey the rules because they’re cooped up
there, too. I’ll tell you what more I know when we’re
under way. That satisfy you for now?”
Deng Ho wet his lips nervously. “Then—we
are to be the experiments this time?”
Sabatini shrugged. “I don’t know, boy. Nobody really
knows, except maybe some of the administrators. I never heard of
anyone ever escaping, though. Once you’re inside, with that
maze of tunnels and air locks, you get so lost, you might never
even find your way out.”
THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE PRETTY AND
BRILLIANT Song Ching into the rougher and masculine Chu Li, while
unlikely to succeed, was nonetheless solidly based on predictable
principles. One was that authoritarian societies, particularly
those which received their orders from machines, ran on orders and
tended to carry out those orders to the letter and without
question, even at the cost of common sense. The other was that most
people would believe that it took someone with the artistry,
skills, and experience of an expert like Doctor Wang to accomplish
such a transformation at all, when in a computer age all it took
was someone who could talk to a computer and order it to do the
work.
Chu Li was barely fifteen; his youth made the illusion easier to
pull off, and some rather basic changes helped it along. Song
Ching’s hair was cut extremely short, almost but not quite
gone along the sides and short with a straight-back clipper cut on
top, while the nails had been closely trimmed to the fingers. The
heavy cotton prisoner tunic and baggy trousers made any wearer
shapeless. Song Ching’s middle soprano had been lowered in
pitch one half octave; any more would have been inconsistent with a
boy of fifteen. Chu Li’s dialect was Mandarin, not Song
Ching’s native dialect but the one used at Center and
therefore no problem.
The boys had been back in the cell, sedated, barely twenty
minutes when the guards came for them. Their sleeves were rolled
up, and each was given a shot that counteracted any sedative drugs
still in their bodies. Both sat up, groaning and holding their
heads.
“Get yourselves in order!” a guard barked to them.
“In five minutes each of you will be fed. I strongly
recommend you eat everything; it may be a long time before you get
another decent meal, if ever.” That was said with something
of a smirk. “You will be permitted ten minutes for this and
another five to use the toilet. Then you will be prepared to
leave.” With that, the guard turned and stalked out. The cell
door closed behind him.
“Oooh! My head is only now trying to make peace
with me,” Deng Ho moaned.
“It is the same with me,” Chu Li responded. In Han
and many other Oriental cultures, cousins of the same generation
regarded one another as brothers and sisters and acted accordingly.
The two boys were close. “My head is crowded and confused,
almost as if . . . ”
“As if what?” As if there is another also inside my head, he thought,
but he couldn’t say that. “I just wonder if they messed
with our minds, and if they did, would we know?”
“How’s your—thing?” Memories of brutish guards beating and torturing for the
slightest infractions. Memories of one of them.
“There is no pain,” Chu Li told his cousin.
“It is not right, though. I shall have to pee sitting down
for a while, I think. I do not know what awaits us, but it cannot
be any worse than here. Even death is better than here.”
Chu Li tried to clear his mind. So long as he concentrated on
the here and now, it was fine, but when he let himself relax, his
thoughts became somewhat crowded and confused. The guards who had
beaten him had threatened “to make a girl of him,” but
even that would not have given him memories and information that
seemed to belong to a girl, one from a far different background and
one he had never known. Some of those memories and impressions were
far sharper than those from his own life—but there was a
difference. He could remember that other life, but he could not
place himself in the position of that girl. He felt as if he were
looking at things from the viewpoint of an outside observer.
He had little time to dwell on this right away, for the guards
were sticking solidly to their schedule. Chu Li and Deng Ho were
placed in handcuffs and short leg irons and marched rudely through
corridors, checkpoints, and safeguards to the main entrance, where
a squad of black-clad regular security police awaited them.
“They’re all yours, Lieutenant,” the chief
guard said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “We’ve
put them through the mill and taught them some manners. Good
riddance.”
The lieutenant just nodded, and both men pressed their thumbs on
the receiving board to signify the transfer.
“All right, you two,” the new captor said to the
boys. “No trouble, now. I don’t know what they did to
you in there, and I don’t care. Legally, you are no longer
citizens of the Community or even human beings. You are cattle, the
property of the System Administrative Council, and they can and
will do with you as they wish, as can I as their deputy. Not a word
out of you, now; follow me.”
They were led out to a landing bay where a skimmer awaited them.
They got in and were surprised to find two girls already seated
there, both in the same prison garb they themselves wore. Neither
girl turned to look at them but just sat quiet and sullen. Chu Li
thought he saw some sort of scar or welt on the face of the one
closest to him, but then he was chained in his seat and could look
only forward.
The large passenger skimmer lifted quickly into the air, took
its assigned exit trajectory, and smoothly cleared the dome, then
rose to cruising altitude. As the skimmer gained speed, the boys
were pushed back into their seats.
They wanted to talk to the girls, who were seated in front of
them, but a few nasty whacks from a guard’s leather stick
produced silence. Chu Li had nothing to do but settle back and
think.
Why did he have this strange girl’s memories? What had
they done to him in there and why? He tried to relax and sort out
what he could of this alien information. The Lord Buddha
protect him! She’d been the daughter of the chief
administrator! The very bastard who had ordered the massacre of his
people! And she had been there!
He compared his own memories to hers. Darkness, sudden cold,
people screaming and running, shots all over, illuminating the
dark. One shot catches his sister and burns her upper half to
melted goo. All the time she had been up there, in
the officer’s skimmer, enjoying every moment and wanting to
get down and get into the battle herself, to shoot some of his
people. It had been nothing but a game to her, an amusing
entertainment.
The more he examined her memories and attitudes, the more he
hated her. People were mere objects to her, toys for her amusement
or fools to play off each other for her gain. Rich, pampered,
spoiled, and arrogant, she was a most unpleasant person, the very
kind he had always been taught ruled the world. Such beauty and
such genius. Such evil.
How he would like to get hold of her, rip off her fine clothes,
dress her in rags, exchange her jasmine perfume for sweat and dung,
make her the lowest peasant slave, show her what it felt like to be
brutalized. She and her whole cursed family. It was they who should
have been on this ship going to some deep hell, not the ones who
were here.
But what were her memories doing in his mind? Some kind of
mistake? She had been at Center herself, it seemed, and not as a
visitor or voyeur but to be remade into a good noble’s wife
and breeder. It was too kind a fate for her, but it was at least a
step toward justice. She had been an expert at computers; she had
examined his people’s discoveries. Had her old memories and
knowledge gotten mixed in with his in that computer by some
mistake? It was possible. It was also possible that she had managed
this herself, to save her knowledge even as they were stripping
clean her soul. If so, it was justice that the daughter of his
people’s murderer should inadvertently pass on that knowledge
to one of her victims.
He now had that knowledge, including the actual way to steal a
spaceship, and he hoped he could use it. It would be the ultimate
revenge on her if she was mentally made over into a prim little
wife while he, whose people had made these discoveries and had been
destroyed while she watched and thrilled at the spectacle, was
somehow able to use that to escape.
It was all too evil to him and too disturbing. His grandfather
long ago had taught him an ancient mental discipline, one which
gave control of thoughts and memories and could even fool the big
computers for periods of time. His people had survived with it and
escaped detection for a generation, and he now applied it to
another aim. It was a form of self-hypnosis, but it was more than
that; it was a mystical thing that worked by will and concentration
and the Ten Exercises. He wanted her out. He wanted all traces of
her banished from his conscious mind, save only the computer
knowledge and skill and the secrets she knew. She would give up her
knowledge, skills, and discoveries, but then he would have the
pleasure at least of killing her in his mind.
But for the first time in his memory, the mental discipline did
not really work. It distanced the girl’s memories a bit more,
but she was still there.
The skimmer flew over vast, rocky desert and eerie tablelands,
then began to slow and descend. Atop one desolate plateau there was
a huge blocky complex, and to one side, rising up like a temple
spire, was a spaceship. It could be seen clearly against the
morning sky; the pilot pointed it out through the broad front
windscreen of the skimmer. Chu Li brought himself out of the Ten
Exercises to see what the excitement was about and got somewhat
excited himself. Space! They are exiling us to space!
They settled down so slowly and so close to the spaceship that
it went by the front windows in dramatic fashion. Finally the door
opened, and the security lieutenant unbuckled himself and got out,
carrying the security identifier from Center. After greeting the
other security officials, he immediately inserted the module into
the space center systems slot. This way, the four young people
would be identified by security records and systems as outbound
prisoners. It was also another link in the computer-engineered
masquerade: Now the spaceport records would show Chu Li as
“he” now appeared, with the current Chu Li’s
fingerprints and eyeprints. The spaceport was tied directly into
Master System; therefore, the Center security computer had encoded
a correction program showing initial data errors and reversing the
prints of Song Ching and Chu Li. Her body was now totally
identified and registered as Chu Li, 15, male, born in Paoting,
Hopeh Province, apprehended in illegal activity, Chamdo Province,
and declared Property of the State; remanded to Melchior Research
and Detention facility until death. As the real Chu Li no longer
existed, not even in trace, Song Ching was about to vanish
impossibly and forever—and heads would roll for it.
When the prisoners were ordered out, the boys got their first
clear look at the girls, both of whom looked downcast and old
beyond their years. There were scars on their faces. Ugly
ones.
They were marched inside and down a busy corridor, past many
eyes staring at them from offices, to an elevator, then taken to an
upper-level detention area. It had clearly not been designed as
such; there were barred gates at either end of a short corridor
monitored by cameras as well as by human guards, but the four cells
were little more than barren, unfinished offices in which had been
placed some army mattresses that looked as if they’d seen
work and a small commode not attached to plumbing but containing a
pitcher of water and some plastic glasses. They were told that if
they needed to eliminate they were to yell for a guard and that one
would be along to take them one at a time to the lone toilet on the
floor.
To Chu Li’s surprise, he was pushed into a cell with one
of the girls. “This is not proper!” he protested.
The guard grinned. “My orders were to split that pair up.
They have a real way with locks and stuff. Go ahead and have some
fun if you’re old enough to know what I mean. We don’t
care.”
The door slammed shut, leaving them alone. The girl kept her
eyes on him but did not say a word. The haunted expression in her
eyes drew his attention away from the two large, irregular scars
that disfigured her face.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I have
much honor but little else and would not do that if I
could.”
The ice was broken, and she relaxed a bit. “What do you
mean, if you could?” Her voice was high and nasal, her
Mandarin dialect colored by a peasant’s accents and tone.
“It is too embarrassing to discuss.”
“There is nothing too embarrassing for me. I have lost
even my honor. They—they gave us to the male guards for two
days and nights before cleaning us up for this.”
He was not certain what to say to that. Finally he managed,
“You need not feel shame at that, at least I think not. It
was not of your doing, and it is they who have dishonored
themselves, not you.”
She stood there a moment, then, slowly, tears came to her eyes
and she began to cry. He wasn’t quite sure what to do.
Finally he went over to her, and she leaned against him and just
cried and cried as he held her. He was just at the stage where he
was finding girls different, exotic, and strangely important, but
this was the first time he had ever held one in his arms. It felt
good to lend some strength to her; he had been treated harshly, but
she had endured far more.
Clearly this cry had been a long time coming, and he eased her
onto the floor mat and just sat beside her, holding her until she
had it cried out. She clung to him as if he were very important,
yet they had only just now met and did not even know each
other’s names.
When she was done crying, he asked her if he could get her some
water, and she nodded. He brought her a cup and a paper towel to
dry her eyes.
She had been attractive once; he could see that. No great
beauty, but it had been a good face, and because of that, the scars
were an even greater disfigurement. One ran from the left side of
her mouth up her cheek and then back toward her ear, pulling the
corner of the lip up grotesquely and permanently exposing two
teeth; the other was a huge, deep horizontal gash. Both were built
up like mountains on her smooth skin by scar tissue that had partly
turned purple and brown. Still, as he looked at her now and helped
her dry her tears, he felt odd stirrings inside him, and though he
could not forget the scar tissue, for the moment it did not seem
very important.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, blowing her nose.
“I—I was always the strong one. I am sorry that I
permitted you to see me this way.”
“It is all right,” he responded. “You must be
strong indeed to go through that and not be mad.”
“Perhaps I am mad,” she responded. “I have
been living what can only be a nightmare, in which you are the
first man to show any kindness.”
“Only half a man,” he responded, not realizing how
much truth there was in that description. Because she had told him
her ultimate shame, he felt not only that he could tell her his
secret but that it might give her some idea that suffering was not
exclusive. “The guards beat me terribly where that which
makes me a man is, leaving it battered, bruised, and perhaps
broken. There is no pain, but it will be a long time before I know.
That is what I was too embarrassed and ashamed to say
before.”
“Oh! I apologize for asking. Please forgive
me.”
He shook it off. “What is done cannot be undone, and who
knows what was done? Only time will tell that. I am otherwise whole
and very angry at all this. My people taught us that the world was
ruled by monsters in human form, but I did not really believe this
until they came for us. I am Chu Li, by the way, sometimes called
Rat because of my small size and the year of my birth.”
“I am Chow Dai. My sister who suffers with me is Chow Mai.
As you might guess, we are—” she touched the scar on
her right cheek “—were twins.”
“I hope that my cousin, Deng Ho, is honorable with her and
that they get along. He is more likely to be crying on
her shoulder, I fear, though he has held up better than I
would have guessed.” Sparing little, he told her how he and
his cousin had come to be there and what his own people had been
like, free of the tyranny of the machines.
She listened, fascinated. “I have nothing of that in my
past,” she told him. “I fear I have never known even
that much freedom. Even the women of your people were free and
educated.”
“You are not of the Center?”
“No. Oh my, no! We are simple peasant girls. The family
was very big, and we were always hungry, it seemed. When a time of
drought came, my parents had no way to feed us all and no money to
marry us off. Unlike some of the others of their generation, they
did not believe in drowning baby daughters, and so had too
many.”
He was appalled. “They drowned babies?”
She seemed surprised at his reaction. “It has been the
custom for thousands of years. They try and wipe it out, but in bad
times it returns. Sons may return what they consume and care for
the parents in their old age. Daughters are a burden, for you must
pay even to marry them to someone. We understood this. There was a
petition to the Lord of the Estates, who had always encouraged even
the poor families to keep their daughters, and he listened. We were
sold to the household of Colonel Chin, a mighty warlord, to be
personal servants to his own daughter.”
“Sold?” He could hardly believe this. Hers
was a world far removed from his experience.
“We didn’t mind. Our parents were relieved of their
burden, received some sum they could use, and knew that we were
honorably employed. Our mistress was harsh and demanding, but we
had fine clothes, food such as we had never dreamed of eating,
protection, and something of a position.”
“As a slave, you mean.”
“No, as a member of the household staff. It has far more
standing than planting and picking rice, and we were very young.
Then we were taken one time to Center, a place we had never dreamed
existed. It was like a high-born’s heaven. It was our
undoing, though, in the end. We helped the mistress bathe and
clothe herself, tended to the personal things, but much of the
other work was done by the machines. We were not permitted out of
the quarters except in the company of our mistress, so it was very
boring. We could not even sneak out, for we did not know how to
open the locks.”
“I would have spent the time reading. Surely there were
many books and tapes around on many topics.”
Again she looked embarrassed. “I—we—cannot
read or write.”
He felt foolish and ashamed of himself. In the colony there were
many who were never able to master most or all of the more than
thirty thousand characters of the alphabet. He himself had had help
with machines and special training to allow him to read at a level
far beyond what one his age, even if very bright, would have
managed without them. Most people in China could not read, in fact.
Literacy was what truly set the classes apart, the heart of their
division. If, somehow, a peasant could learn to read and take the
examinations, he could rise in society. The better one read and the
more one read, the more complex the examination one took. It was
the one road to social mobility open to all Chinese, although, of
course, it was next to impossible for a peasant to learn to read,
while the child of a stupid or slow highborn who could not manage
the skill was never demoted to peasant.
“I am sorry. I will make no more stupid remarks,” he
said lamely. “Please tell me more of how you came
here.”
Her smile told him that all was forgiven. “One day a man
came who was an expert on locks. A security man of sorts. He was
young and very handsome, and we made a fuss over him, I’m
afraid. He began to brag about his trade and show off his knowledge
of the locks and security systems, and even explained some of his
tools. It was quite an education. He didn’t think mere
peasant servants could understand what he said, but it was actually
quite simple. We soon found basic apartment locks no problem at
all. Some other locks and doors were more difficult, but even ones
requiring fingerprints were beatable. Once you understood the
principle, it was simple to find a way around each.”
“Some of those would still require special tools to
defeat,” he noted. “You said as much
yourself.”
“Some tools were simple and could be made from other
things. Others, the complicated mechanical tools, you could get if
you wanted. We once had an uncle who was something of a magician. A
criminal, really, but a minor one. He would put on little magic
shows and phony gambling games in the village. Sometimes he
arranged to lose, for he would then simply brush against you, and
the contents of your purse would be in a hidden pocket in his
shirt. Anyone with long fingers, nerve, and short nails could do it
if they practiced, and he showed us all the tricks. We kids would
always be doing it to one another and to others just for fun. We
never—hardly ever—kept anything.”
“You said you used to have an uncle. He is dead
now?”
“Yes. Hanged when I was twelve. The trick is even easier
with two, and my sister and I are very good at it. So, when we saw
a repairman with tools we wanted walking along, we had no problem
getting them. The highborn used to be the easiest, but those of
Center are easier yet. They are ignorant of the trick and casual
about it.”
He nodded, his appreciation of her skills growing. “So you
were not bored anymore.”
“No. Oh, it was really all just a game. Slip out and slip
into the dwelling of some highborn who was not in at the time and
take something minor, something pretty but not likely to be missed,
such as a bottle of perfume or some bauble. It became a contest,
and it was most exciting.”
“I bet. And then you were caught?”
“Not very quickly. We simply were carried away by our own
poor ignorance. We wandered in one time to a security zone which
was computer-monitored and tripped alarms. We were sealed in and
trapped. At first they could not believe that we were who and what
we seemed, but after long sessions with drugs and doctors and
machines, they decided we were just what we seemed to be. So they
tied us to a wall, whipped us, then gave us to the security guards.
Then, suddenly, we were pulled back, bathed, cleaned up and tended
to, placed in chains, and sent to the flying machine.”
“Pardon me for mentioning it, but your wounds are from the
beating?”
“No. I have more scars all up and down my back. When they
first threw me to the guards, I fought. We both did. I scratched
the face of one of them very badly. They held us down while he
carved this in my face and similar gashes in my sister’s
face. He—he said that we might as well enjoy what was coming,
because no man would wish to do anything with us again. I wished
only to kill myself in my shame, but they made very sure I could
not do that. Only by finally convincing them that I would do
nothing rash right now did I gain any freedom of movement, even to
being here like this. I could see in every eye how hideous I have
become.”
“I—knew—a woman once. A girl. She was of
highborn stock, and her beauty was perfection, yet inside she was
the personification of all that is foul, evil, and monstrous in
people. Those attracted to her beauty will be as flies in a
spider’s web. I, too, might have been a fly in her web, but
even in this place I learn and improve myself. My Buddhist teacher
would understand, although it took his pupil this long to see his
meaning. The body is but a shell. One must look beyond to the soul
and see only it if it shines pure.” Impulsively, although he
had never done it before, he drew her to him and kissed her. When
their lips parted, the look on her face was a mixture of shock,
surprise, and almost childlike wonder.
“I think,” she whispered, “that I may yet live
a little while.”
“I did not do this out of pity, you must believe that, but
I feel your pain within me,” he said softly. “You have
suffered far more than I have.”
“No. I did not lose my family and all my people, and what
I did I did myself, knowing it was criminal. You had no choice in
it. We threw away comfortable lives out of boredom, and now we pay
for that, but you are without guilt or blame, and you have lost
everything. Now we both go to our fate, whatever and wherever it
is. I heard them say that the great spire out there is a ship that
goes into the heavens, beyond the world. Is that true? Is that even
possible?”
“Yes. It can go from this plant to another.”
“What is a planet?” she asked him, genuinely
curious.
“Huh? Other worlds than this, like the moon, only farther
off.”
“You mean they are sacrificing us by sending us to the
moon goddess? I have often prayed to her. She may be
merciful.”
He was startled. Ignorance was one thing, but how could he
reconcile someone who had figured out in a brief lesson how to pick
some of the most elaborate computer-controlled security locks in a
high-tech place like Center with someone who clearly had no idea
that there was any place beyond China, who thought the moon was a
goddess and probably also believed that the world was flat?
“We are not being sacrificed,” he assured her.
“Not that we might not be better off at that. We are being
sent to another place like the one we have just left, only
suspended in the heavens so that there is no way for us to ever
leave. I do not know what happens to the people sent there, except
that it strikes fear even in the hearts of the guards of Center
security.”
She accepted that. “That fills me with fear as well. A
place in the heavens could not ever be escaped from. You might go
through the locks, but you would fall endlessly in the
heavens.”
“No, you would be dead before that. There is no air to
breathe in space. The only air we will have will be in the place
they keep us. It is better than any locks to keep someone
imprisoned.”
“Yet you are not afraid. I can tell.”
In fact he was afraid, particularly now that he’d
heard about her own treatment, seen the scars on the outside and
sensed the others on her soul. If what both of them had experienced
was not the worst punishment, then they were being taken to a
horror he could not imagine. The fact that it was an unknown of
such dimensions was terrifying, yet he could not admit that to her
or let it dominate him.
“I fear only what I face that is worthy of that
fear,” he responded bravely. “Then I will face death
bravely and spit at him. For now, I still yearn to
fight.”
As they talked, he began examining the room for hidden cameras
and microphones. A plan was beginning to take shape in his mind,
and if he could somehow communicate it to her and she could do her
part, it was just possible. His people were gone, save for himself
and Deng, but he still had their dream, and he had the knowledge to
carry it out, as well.
He found surveillance devices—not many but sufficient to
block any real secrets. He settled back on the mat next to her.
“You know, my people found how to fly one of those
spaceships,” he said casually but in a low tone. “It is
a pity we will be chained and probably guarded in a locked room all
the way to wherever we go.”
She lay down comfortably beside him and squeezed his hand.
“Yes, it is,” she agreed.
They had talked almost nonstop throughout the day, without
reservation or hesitancy in even the most personal and intimate
things. It was as if they had known each other all their lives and
were catching up on the time spent apart. Too, there was both a
direct and a subtle exchange of vital information as he tried to
give her a cram course in the basics of astronomy while also
conveying what he needed from her in the practical sense.
A meal was finally delivered, and it proved to be a pleasant
surprise. The recipe was Mongolian, with chunks of lamb, fried
wonton in a spicy garlic-laced sauce, and rice, and the vegetables
tasted fresh. Even the tea was hot. Chu Li wasn’t sure if
this was the last meal of a condemned prisoner or, more likely, the
same thing being served to the staff in this cobbled-together
prison section.
Chow Dai wondered why they had bothered to split up the two
pairs, since with human guards and cameras in unfamiliar territory
she was unlikely to be able to do anything. Chu Li had responded
that it was probably just another tactic to disorient them, but he
didn’t really believe that. Their captors had analyzed his
mind, and Deng’s, and the minds of the Chow sisters and knew
them probably better than anyone did. They were being sent to this
distant place, at great trouble and expense, because someone there,
for some unspeakable reason, had a use for two boys and two girls
in their middle teens. He suspected they knew that both Deng and he
were the kind whose hearts would go out to such kindred spirits in
distress and that mere attentions by a male might well guarantee
that the pair would not commit suicide or try something so
desperate it would mean their death.
The spaceship they had seen was an OG-47 resupply ship. It had
to have landed for repairs of some sort that were not available at
the moment in space; usually such ships did not land at all but
were serviced by ground-to-orbit cargo ships. The OG-47 had a
pressurized passenger compartment holding up to sixteen for one to
three days, fewer for longer journeys. The pilot’s cabin as
usual was in a vacuum state in space but could be entered by
airlock in a space suit. There was no guarantee that such suits
would be aboard, but if they were, they would be Type 61s and
stored in a computer-locked compartment to the rear of the
passenger cabin, to be opened automatically in case of
emergency.
It startled him just to know that. Where had he learned it? Not
with his own people, certainly. Not from those strange memories of
the girl, either. He became more and more convinced that someone
had played some nasty tricks on his mind, and he didn’t like
it. Were they being toyed with? Had someone who knew his
people’s project given him this much just to see if he could
really do it? Steal a spaceship?
It had to be something like that. Dai and Mai were part of it,
too. It was too impossible to believe that he, with his knowledge,
would find himself teamed with two accomplished thieves and
locksmiths. He did not for one minute believe that the girls were
anything other than what they appeared to be, but someone or
something had assigned them to be going just where he was
going at the same time and on the same ship.
He disliked the feeling of being a wind-up doll in someone
else’s toy game. Who? This Song Ching? It would be in
character, but what profit would she get by it? She wouldn’t
know if her plan succeeded or failed or get the data to use in any
attempt of her own. To test the security system? Four teenagers
with no real experience when there were almost certainly so many
others they could use who would be better suited?
He could not know, but he would simply have to watch out. The
fact was, no matter what the reason, they had to try to escape.
Certainly Dai was bright; she had understood immediately the
implications of his comments and had been giving and getting
information through the day’s conversations as well.
That evening, the guards came for each prisoner individually and
took them down the hall to a different room, which proved to be a
small water shower with a little dressing area complete with
built-in mirror. After bathing, they were provided with fresh
clothing of the same design as their prison garb, but dyed yellow
with security stamped front and back in Chinese and two other
languages.
Chu Li felt a reluctance to actually take the shower, although
it appeared that there were no visual monitors in there and
therefore that there was some measure of privacy afforded. He had
never bathed very often, but he ordinarily would have wished it
now. But some fear, an unreasoning thing, made him hesitate. He did
not, however, have much choice.
The hypnotics held. When he emerged and looked at himself in the
mirror, he still saw the image of a young boy, not the image that
was actually there. He dressed again and was led back to the
detention room.
After lights-out, she lay beside him, and their hands came
together and squeezed; she clung to him as if he were the only real
thing in her life. They hugged and cuddled for a bit and rubbed
each other’s backs. In the dark, she had no deformities at
all.
He wanted her, and clearly she wanted and needed him, but his
injuries prevented that for now. The fact that they were isolated
and alone and facing an uncertain but definitely unpleasant future
heightened their desire. But they both slept, huddled against each
other for reassurance.
For Chow Dai, Chu Li’s companionship was a deliverance, no
matter how temporary, from the pit of hell. She had never
experienced the kindness and gentleness that this boy had shown her
even when she had been unscarred; the fact that he did so even when
she looked so horrible was wondrous and magical. She barely knew
him, yet she knew she needed him and would risk anything for him.
He had but to ask. She dreamed the first pleasant dreams she had
dreamed in weeks.
Chu Li’s dreams were different. He dreamed that he was
making real love to her, although she had long, silky black hair
and no scars, but as he approached her, naked, she suddenly got a
look of horror on her face and shied away, crying. This was mixed
with other, stranger dreams that even included spaceship schematics
and nightmares where he saw his parents, alive again, but when he
ran to them they recoiled in horror and turned, and when they
turned back they were not his parents at all but the tall,
frightening figures of that other girl’s parents, the chief
administrator and his wife. The girl was there, too, running in and
out of his dreams, spoiling even the good ones, dancing through and
whispering tauntingly, “I know a secret.”
The elderly orderly awakened them with a breakfast of rice and
fish heads. “Eat well and relax,” he told them
genially. “Tonight you leave for your destinies.”
“My sister and the boy—are they all right?”
Chow Dai asked nervously. She had almost a sixth sense, as did many
twins, about her sister even when separated, but she had no real
feelings of Chow Mai now, and that worried her more than
anything.
“Oh, they are getting along fine, as are the two of you,
it seems. Do not worry about them. You will see them today.”
He chuckled to himself and left.
He looked at Chow Dai. “Today. Sometime today.”
She nodded. “I hope they let us see each other for a while
first. You know, when my sister and I are together, often we need
few words even to talk to one another.”
Chu Li was feeling a bit dizzy, a little fuzzy in the head, but
he put his disorientation down to nervous tension and apprehension.
About midday he felt he had to go to the bathroom and called for
the guard. The sense of disorientation continued and his stomach
was upset. In the bathroom, he could be alone and, hopefully, get
something of a grip on himself. He felt as if he was losing his
mind.
Twice he’d failed to respond when Chow Dai had addressed
him by his name. Images—strong, primary images—of his
parents, siblings, old friends, the details of his past life,
seemed to be melting or fading. He suddenly could not remember what
his father or mother looked like. The other memories,
though—her memories—were all still there and
seemed to be getting clearer in spite of his attempts to push them
back.
He was led to the bathroom, and he sat, holding his head in his
hands. Then he looked down and put one of his hands down between
his legs. Suddenly, some of the conditioning broke away and was
gone. They have emasculated me! He unbuttoned his tunic
and looked at and felt his chest. Two huge nipples atop small,
perfect breasts. He quickly got up and disrobed completely,
examining his body as if for the first time. The smooth skin, the
curves . . . A girl! They have changed me
into a girl!
And not just any girl. He knew what was happening now. He was
being changed not just to female, but into her, the one he
hated, the daughter of his people’s murderers!
He saw it all now, or thought he did. She could not remain as
she was, so she had somehow convinced the computers there, or the
doctors, to take him, a lowly nothing, and change him into a mental
and physical duplicate of her. The victim was turning into
the oppressor. The memory of the beatings had probably been planted
so that he wouldn’t notice the surgery until it was too late
to betray her.
There was an angry knock and an impatient snarl from the other
side of the door. He knew he had to get dressed again fast and get
out of there. They could change his shape, but they could not
change his mind, he vowed to himself. He was a boy, even if now
locked in a girl’s body. He might have her memories, but he
would never become her. Never. He would die first. There
was more to manhood than what they had stolen from him. Monks
refused all sex, yet they were certainly men. It was important to
him that he keep this attitude no matter how much of her eventually
took over. He could never become her, become the callous, cruel,
and evil one she was, if he retained that.
He was rudely cursed by the guard and led back to the detention
room where Chow Dai awaited. Chow Dai. He could face anything but
dashing her few hopes—even this. He still wanted her. He
loved her, damn it—but he could never make love to
her. That was what his dreams had been telling him.
“Rat! You were gone so long, I was getting worried about
you,” she told him.
“I—I made some discoveries about myself,” he
responded carefully. At least his voice still sounded normal, at
least to him. He wanted to tell her, to tell somebody, but
while she would understand, the revelation would still crush her.
He couldn’t do it. Not now. Not until he had to.
“Discoveries?”
“My—injuries—are far worse than I thought,
that’s all.”
She hugged him. “Don’t worry. Peasant girls are
taught infinite patience.” Infinite is right, he thought sourly, but said nothing.
For the time being, escape was the only thing that mattered. If
they did not escape, none of the rest would matter. Later, if they
made it, he would find some gentle way to tell her.
In fact, by the change in him, the quieter periods, his
reluctance to really get close, she guessed a part of the truth.
She suspected that he had just now realized the extent to which the
same people who had tortured, raped, and disfigured her had also
disfigured him. She knew just from the treatment she had received
afterward that they could do much, even make you forget your
injuries and pain for a while, although the effects wore off. Her
mood fell as she voiced her suspicions to herself. They have made
him a eunuch, she guessed. It is the only explanation. She had
almost expected it, guessed it from the start when he had spoken of
his injury. Well, she wasn’t going to pretend that it
didn’t matter to her, but he was still the same kind, gentle
one who had treated her with respect and ignored her own
disfigurement. She had no intention of abandoning him, not now. If
he could ignore her disfigured shell and see only someone
worthwhile inside, she could certainly do the same.
But though both of them saw and preferred the lie, the truth
would not be kept down inside of Chu Li. Bit by bit, as the day
wore on, Song Ching’s truth chipped slowly but methodically
away at Chu Li, and he fought it. The boy’s memories and
sense of identity were rapidly fading now, leaving only Song Ching,
yet the biochemically induced Chu Li personality was becoming
firmer, harder, fixed.
Even for the computer it had been a rush job, an emergency, and
it might have been predicted that something undefinable and
unanticipated would arise. Song Ching had ordered blocks that made
her cold, unemotional, machinelike, and this had been altered only
as required by the masquerade. As a result, the basic personality
and responses of Chu Li were the only ones present and created an
overwhelming desire to remain as they were, resisting all attempts
at change. The brain created personality, but it also was subject
to a measure of adaptation, and, having no countermanding
“fallback” personality, it responded to this urgent
desire to maintain current levels. There was a dichotomy inside of
her, a war between body and brain that simply could not go on.
“Are you all right?” Chow Dai asked worriedly.
“You look ill.”
“I—I think I should just lie down for a
while,” he managed. “It is an—aftereffect of what
was done to me. I apologize, but if I lie down for a while, it will
be all right.”
He was a conscious combatant in the war raging inside him, and
it had made him physically ill, both feverish and upset. The
tension and confusion were enormous; he could not stand this much
longer. Either something had to break or he knew he might well
die—die on the brink of possible success and escape in which
he was the only hope for these other people. Any moment now the
guards could come for them, so there was no time for such a fight.
By now he knew he really was Song Ching; there had been no
tampering with Chu Li’s body or mind. Chu Li was certainly
dead, his body long sent to dust or turned to energy, and she was
responsible for that. It was an intolerable thought. It was
intolerable that she should live again while he was dead, no matter
what the price of that life might be, yet his memories even now
were less than ghosts, mere wisps fading with each passing moment,
leaving only Song Ching.
The brain had several mechanisms for resolving such dilemmas,
whether caused by biological malfunction or trauma or otherwise
induced, and all of them were forms of what they called insanity.
If it could not resolve the problems, the brain got hung up in
endless loops and the result was catatonia, but in this case both
sides had a sense of urgency and a single central purpose: escape.
Escape to the stars. The brain needed only a lie that both sides
could accept and believe; if that happened, then memories could be
rewritten, attitudes adjusted, and everything resolved to allow
function. A new reality was called for, and a very personal
one.
In a miraculous revelation, she suddenly understood what had
happened, and there was no more fight, only awe at the justice of
the gods. When the computer had executed Chu Li, his soul had not
gone on but had instead been placed in the body of Song Ching, who
had ordered the destruction of her own personality in her plot. Her
own soul had been cast adrift when this was done, and Chu
Li’s had filled the empty vessel in a measure of justice. The
soul was shaped and formed and purified or dirtied by its
experiences in the flesh, but it did not retain memories as such.
Still, she knew it was Chu Li’s soul animating Song
Ching’s body and guiding her thoughts. That was true justice:
The soul of the enemy who was destroyed by her family was now in
possession of her body, her memories, her knowledge, and those
would be used against her family and the system that supported it.
That was clearly the will of the gods.
There was a price for this, of course. Chu Li’s soul had
not risen to be purified; it remained the soul of a teenage boy. He
was a man trapped in the body and with the memories of a beautiful
woman. It would be a frustrating burden to carry, but the symmetry
of the justice meted out by the gods required it. Because the
knowledge in her head was so vast, so complete, and so dangerous to
those who must be punished, it was a burden that had to be
accepted. It left someone with the means to avenge, and that had to
be sufficient.
For now, the Chu Li masquerade had to be continued so that the
primary goal could be attained. Later there would be time for
explanations and the truth. The reclining figure sat up, saw the
anxious Chow Dai, and smiled. “I am all right now,” he
assured her. “I will be all right from now on.”
She looked relieved. “I was almost going to call the guard
and have you looked at. You really worried me.”
He was glad she hadn’t done that, or the ruse would have
been up right there. There being no machines to measure and
identify souls, it would have taken but a moment for the stupidest
of medics to realize that this was not a boy named Chu Li.
He looked at Chow Dai’s ugly, scarred face and reflected
on how truly ironic this all was. He could do just as well looking
like her; indeed, it would solve some potential problems down the
line. She, on the other hand, would prosper and blossom with the
body he wore. The scientists could make a sadist a gentle poet and
a peasant into an educated artist with their chemicals and
processes, but only the gods could switch souls. Although it would
work out here, it was in a way a reassuring thought: that there was
one thing, at least, beyond science and reserved for the gods.
Not long after, Chow Mai and Deng Ho were sent in to join them.
Deng’s conditioning still held; Chu Li hoped it would hold
long enough to avoid any complications. The two sisters rushed to
each other and embraced and cried a little. Deng grinned at Chu Li.
“Hello, Rat. Surviving?”
Chu Li nodded. “And you?”
Deng gave a knowing smirk. “No problems if you just shut
your eyes,” he whispered, then grew more serious.
“They’ve been through even worse than us. It’s
crazy, but we’re going to some mad hell, and I feel sorry for
them. Kind of takes your mind off it.”
Chu Li looked over at the sisters, who were chattering away in
pure peasant dialect. They seemed to be talking at the same time,
and he guessed from the few words he caught that they were using a
kind of spoken shorthand, expressing complete thoughts.
That’s fine, he thought. He understood full well that the
monitors would never make sense of that garbage.
The girls had only a few minutes for their reunion, though. The
door opened again, and the duty guard stepped in.
“You will all stand and be silent!” he barked
imperiously. “You will now be addressed by the captain of the
vessel that will carry you to your final destination!” He was
as stiff as usual, but nervousness was revealed in his eyes and in
small jerks of his head back toward the door.
Chu Li—he refused to think of himself as otherwise and
certainly not as a “she,” all physical evidence to the
contrary—was startled that such a ship had a captain at all.
A steward perhaps, or even a jailer—but a captain?
They heard the barred gate open and then clang shut again, then
the sound of heavy footsteps approached the door, which the guard
had continued to hold open. When the captain walked in, the
prisoners all gasped and stared at him as if he were some sort of
monster. They are giving us to foreign devils!
Carlo Sabatini stopped and looked at the expressions of absolute
fear and revulsion on those four young faces and drank it in.
Seeing the reactions of people who had never in their lives seen
anyone who was not Oriental was the only bit of fun there was in
this hick, provincial spaceport. These four looked like
they’d never seen anybody but a Han Chinese and the Mongolian
guards before.
“My name is Captain Sabatini,” he announced in
flawless Mandarin, the result of a session with a mindprint
machine. “I am master of the interplanetary ship Star
Islander which will take you from here to Melchior.”
Three of the kids looked blank, but he noticed that the boy on
his far right did not seem to react at all. Clearly that one knew
more than the others, and Sabatini wondered why. He filed it for
future reference.
“The ship, as you may or may not know, is fully automated.
It is piloted by a machine that can make decisions far quicker than
any of us and can fly the ship as no human could. Basically, my job
is to make sure it works correctly and to be certain that any and
all passengers and cargo get safely and comfortably to their
destination, as well as handling things at the ports. As you can
see, I am not Chinese, but rest assured, I am human. I have the
same sort of blood inside of me, and I work the same
way.”
They stared at him, still somewhat awestruck and not a little
afraid. He was imposing, standing over a hundred and
eighty centimeters tall and weighing at least ninety-five kilos of
pure muscle. He had an olive complexion that in their society would
have marked him as ill and at death’s door, thick black hair
with some streaks of gray on the top and cut short on the sides,
and a medium black mustache. He wore a shiny black uniform with
leather boots and belt; the shirt was open at the top and exposed a
fair amount of chest, covered in thick, black hair. He even had
hair on his arms and the back of his hands: thick, black curly
hair. The body hair in particular fascinated all of them. It was
impossible not to think of him as some big ape or gorilla wearing
clothes.
Still, Chu Li was able to break the spell enough to think
clearly. If he goes along, then there is at least one space suit
aboard.
“We don’t normally take off from Earth,” he
told them, “so this will be a rough ride at the start. You
will need to board the ship when it’s angled up, get into
seats as if it were lying flat, and get strapped in, and I do mean
strapped. Anyone who isn’t fully strapped in will die in the
takeoff. Since some of you might be tempted by that idea, we will
have you restrained in place for that part of the trip. Once we
reach orbit and the artificial gravity in the cabin stabilizes, you
will get a measure of freedom, since I don’t want to have to
cart you to the bathroom or spoon-feed you, but you will still be
under limited restraint. I want no problems in our journey, which,
if no unexpected problems or emergencies develop, should take
forty-one days. This is no interstellar speed ship.”
That impressed all four of them. The two boys, who at least
understood what spaceships were, still had trouble with that time
span. The distance involved was really beyond their
comprehension.
“Don’t be too downcast. At other times it might have
taken up to a year to reach Melchior. The positions are the best
possible right now for the shortest distance, which is why we are
taking off now and why we have to do everything exactly on
schedule. Now, since we’re going to be together a long time,
I want to get some facts and rules straight before we even
begin.”
They just continued to gape at him.
“First, and most important, you are booked not as
passengers but as live cargo. That puts you in the same
class as dogs, cats, chickens, and horses. There are two
pressurized sections of the cabin. One is for people, the other is
for animals. The animal section has cages that are not very large
and is otherwise pretty dark and unpleasant. You will be placed
initially in the human section, but if any one of you causes me any
problems at all, one or all of you will be put back there and kept
there for the duration of the voyage. They don’t even have
toilets back there, so think about it. Second, so I don’t
have to look behind me all the time, you will be shackled at all
times and limited in the area you can move. Still, some of you may
figure that I’m only one man, and you might try and get the
best of me in a weak moment of mine. You might try. You might even
succeed, although I promise you that if you try and fail, you will
find me very unpleasant. But let’s say you
succeed.”
He could see in their eyes that this had crossed their minds. It
always did, and he’d transported tougher and nastier ones
than these.
“I cannot pilot the ship,” he told them. “I
cannot even get to the bridge, since it is without air or pressure,
and so neither can you. No matter what happened to me, I
couldn’t help you, and you would wind up in the exact same
place and in the hands of the exact same people, only you
wouldn’t know how to run the life maintenance and support
system for the cabins. I also have within me, implanted by a
surgeon—where, I don’t know—a tiny transmitter.
It is hooked both to the ship and to a Master System relay. If I
die, that beacon stops transmitting. When it does, Master System
will call the ship and determine whether my death was natural or
murder. If it was murder, Master System will take direct command of
the ship and release gas into the compartment that will not kill
you but will put you down into a sleep from which you cannot wake
up without the antidote. If you kill me, not only will you not
escape and not die, but your families back here, no matter how
innocent, will replace you.”
Not likely in the Song Ching family, Chu Li reflected, but then
realized that there were cousins and others who might well be
forced to replace her. However, it was empty to threaten Deng or
himself that way. The system had already destroyed their families
and friends as well. Still, for the girls’ sake, he could not
fail.
All right. So far it was proceeding exactly as the plans in his
mind told him it would. Of course, Sabatini had not mentioned a
couple of other safeguards, but he wouldn’t. That was all
right. There were ways around this.
“Now, with all that out of the way,” Sabatini
concluded, “let me say that I am a ship’s captain, not
a member of the police or the military of anyone. I haul cargo and
people. If you are friendly, cooperative, and make no trouble, this
can be a pleasant voyage. I treat people the way they treat me.
Treat me nasty, and I’ll be nastier. Treat me nice, and I can
be very nice as well. Any questions? Come—speak up. We will
be off soon, and it’ll be too late.”
Chu Li didn’t want to draw much attention, but he had to
know one thing. “If you please, Honorable Captain—what
is this Melchior to which we are being sent?”
“Melchior is a rock about thirty kilometers across that
floats around the sun out in the asteroid belt. There’s
nothing on top but some beacons and a single dock, but the thing is
a hollowed-out rock full of chambers, tunnels, rooms, even
something of a town. It’s a lot of things. It’s a place
for scientific research. It’s occasionally a meeting place
for important administrators who want to be away from all
monitoring. Mostly it’s a prison run by scientists who
don’t have to obey the rules because they’re cooped up
there, too. I’ll tell you what more I know when we’re
under way. That satisfy you for now?”
Deng Ho wet his lips nervously. “Then—we
are to be the experiments this time?”
Sabatini shrugged. “I don’t know, boy. Nobody really
knows, except maybe some of the administrators. I never heard of
anyone ever escaping, though. Once you’re inside, with that
maze of tunnels and air locks, you get so lost, you might never
even find your way out.”